For cash-strapped travellers in Britain, the seaside package holiday has always offered a bit of a lifeline. Thus it was for us, too, back in the early months of 1990. I'd temporarily given up my job, in order to study for a French qualification. We had three hungry cats to feed. And our summer holiday the previous year (in Iceland) had well and truly drained the travel budget. But February is always a good time for bargains, and we finally settled on a 10-day, full-board package to Benidorm.

This would not have been a status-boosting mode of travel. Package holidays (dating in their modern form from the 1950s), had by this time gained a bit of a rep. The 1989 movie Shirley Valentine, featuring Brits abroad seeking sun, sea, sex, and chips with everything, accurately reflected the image.

Nor was Benidorm a particularly prestigious destination. Launched into tourism in the 1950s by a mayor who wanted to confront the decline in the fishing industry by remaking his city as a high-rise tourist hub, Benidorm has been dubbed the Manhattan of Spain. The criticism was never exactly fair, and the city has arguably proved a more sustainable tourist model than many other sites. There is space around its skyscrapers, it has a relatively small footprint, and the beach is easily accessed from all points in the city. (In 2015, it even began a quest for UNESCO heritage status.)

We liked it. Yes, there were lots of places offering British food cooked by British people for British holiday-makers. But you could easily avoid those. And yes, it was built-up. But it was also a good place to walk, and it was a great jumping-off point for lots of other areas of interest.













The food at our hotel was simple, and perhaps a little repetitive, but it was tasty enough (and in any case I could eat "Spanish flan", aka caramel custard, ad infinitum). The star turn was always the paella, which was excellent. We were allocated seats at a table with another pair of travellers, two middle-aged British ladies, and they complained about the olive oil, and meticulously sifted through the paella, discarding all the interesting bits (they had a particular animus against anything with tentacles). Our package was full-board, but if you wanted to go off for the day, you could pre-book a packed lunch.

A little train ran between Alicante and Denia, and this was a great way to get out and about independently.













One of our destinations was Alicante, and this trip had a markedly farcical character. The problem started with a certain feline. Alicante was home to hordes of feral cats, and one of them took a fancy to the hotel packed lunch that we were consuming in one of the little squares. Stretching up on his hind legs to reach the chicken he was coveting, he gave Nigel's hand a good clawing, and an entire set of his little needles went right through the skin.

"Oh no," we said to ourselves (well, in fairness, I was probably the one doing most of the anxiety thing). "Do they have rabies here?" We didn't know (and 1990 is well before the era when you could just look these things up on the internet. "And can't rabies be transferred by scratching as well as biting?" (It can, I later confirmed.)

So, off we went to find a health facility that could do whatever needed to be done. My Spanish was not great (at that point, French was entirely occupying the language bit of my head). But I was capable of conveying that a cat had scratched my husband, and we were worried about rabies.

The first facility could not help, and sent us on to another one. This couldn't help either, and again sent us on. I no longer remember how many places we trekked round, each time reciting the little story about the cat, the scratch, my husband, and rabies, but by the time we got to what turned out to be our final destination, I apparently needed no explanation. All I had to say was "cat", and the guy immediately understood. "Ah si, el gato," he said, scurrying off.

Apparently the previous place had phoned ahead, to warn the staff about the barmy British couple who were wandering around the city, brandishing a lacerated hand, and telling some story about a cat in really bad Spanish. But we didn't know this. For all we knew, the guy thought we wanted to buy a cat, and had gone off to find one.

But no. The message had got through. A very efficient doctor, with good English, gave the wound a good disinfecting, and assured us there was no rabies south of the Pyrenees. We weren't totally sure whether to believe that, but we decided to let the matter rest. (And, indeed, Spain has been rabies-free since 1978.)

This is far and away my dominant memory of Alicante, but judging by the photos, it was a very pretty place.







Under our own steam, we also got to Villajoyosa. Again, very charming.





To get to Guadalest, a hilltop fortified village founded in the 11th centuries by the Muslims, we joined an excursion. We've never been very comfortable with these. You arrive with a crowd, you visit in a whirlwind, and you leave with a crowd. And it was an undeniably touristy destination. Nevertheless, its topography is striking.









Three other memories stand out from that brief Spanish interlude. One is the light. They don't call this the Costa Blanca for nothing. Even in February, it was extraordinary. The second is the oranges. We'd never encountered oranges as delicous as these. They were so juicy we used to stand in the bath to eat them... And the third is the purchasing of a Spanish Monopoly set, featuring the streets of Madrid. This formed part of our modest board-games store for many years, and left us only when I passed it on to a Brazilian board-games enthusiast I met in Malaysia...

We were young back in 1990, but we could understand the motivation of the large numbers of elderly long-stay visitors, who took advantage of the low-season prices to sit out the British winter on the beach. (In fact, on the way home, an overly loquacious fellow-passenger told us that the plane regularly carried a contingent of such folks back to Britain in coffins.)

All in all, we left feeling that Benidorm was way better than many of its detractors would paint it. Back in the darkness of the UK winter, a little of its luminosity remained.